DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness

A few months ago, I started thinking more often about being “out” as a multiple. Some of it was because I tend to find that the more people who are able to be out do so, the safer it gets for other people. Some of it was because I don’t think there’s a good reason for me to be ashamed of being multiple, and the way to combat that shame is to be open about who I am (who we are). And some of my thinking about being out as a multiple was wishing that other people who are multiple were also out. Because a lot of us in the system are lonely, and wishing we could find some friends our own age.

So I asked on A Mind’s Journey whether people knew of a commonly used icon that was solely for DID/MPD/Dissociative awareness. I figured, either there was something already out there, and I just didn’t know about it, or I would get a whole lot of people telling me that awareness was a bad idea, and that we should all remain in the closet.

Instead, I discovered that a whole lot of other people out there are also interested in having some way of being able to recognize other people who are multiple. This was exciting! I wasn’t the only person who didn’t want to be alone!

So we decided maybe the best approach would be to ask people to suggest designs for a ribbon and/or other icon (not just people on AMJ, but also other groups of multiples we knew). And within a few months, there had been quite a few submissions from different people, and a chance for everyone who heard about it, and wanted to, to comment.

Eventually, we narrowed the pool down to eleven choices, and then gave people a chance to vote on them. Here are the results. I admit that while I’m pleased that my own design got the most votes, I feel slightly ambivalent about that, because even though everyone had an equal chance… well. People tell me that if everyone had an equal chance, just because it was on my website, and at my suggestion doesn’t mean others were pressured to choose my design. (I ordered the items in the poll based on the designs people had already voted for most often in the online gallery where initial entries were shown.)

Anyhow.

However it came about, there are now two ribbons we’re trying to get people to associate with DID/MPD/Dissociative awareness, the ones that received the two highest numbers of votes. If you’d like to have a way of wearing the ribbons, you can either click on one of the images at the top of this post to visit the Cafe Press store selling items with that image, or you can email me to ask for better-resolution versions of the images.

Or, heck, you could make up your own image and wear that instead. Who says that multiples should only be allowed to have one way of representing themselves?

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